Fifty years ago there appeared a book by the late Beresford Chancellor entitled The Private Palaces of London. In it he described with a facile but not altogether unscholarly pen those great mansions in which the English aristocracy still lived and entertained in a style as yet untroubled by surtax, death-duties and the economic difficulties created by two World Wars. Of the fifteen great town houses to each Of which he devoted a separate chapter less than half now survive, and none of them in private occupation. Apsley House is a museum, Bridgewater House shelters a great industrial organisation, and Spencer House does the same. Lancaster House alone can claim, as a centre of Government hospitality, to continue to fulfil ‘ those social-political functions for which it was long famous and for which it is undoubtedly the best of any surviving in the capital‘ What is more, its careful restoration by the Ministry of Works has given back to London a spectacular interior in the Louis XIV style which became suddenly fashionable during the latter years of George IV.

Francis Goodwin emerges from obscurity at the age of 34, in 1818, about the time that Parliament voted one million pounds for building new churches in populous parishes. The architects attached to the Office of Works (John Nash, Sir John Soane, and Robert Smirke) had been invited to advise the Treasury on the likely expense of such churches: Soane had consequently made enquiries about churches then building. Among these was St. Philip, Turner Street, Stepney (Plate 3), of which the nominal architect was John Walters (1782-1821).